Heaven

When I imagined what Greece would be like, I imagined this.

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There’s a beach near where I’m staying that, if you get there early enough, you can have basically to yourself for a good part of the morning. The water is just cold enough and perfectly clear, and the sand is full of tiny particles of mica that make it glitter through the already glittering water.

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Syros is dry and mountainous, with ancient towns cut into hillsides and tiny roads full of sharp switchbacks. Everything shuts down between 3 and 5 for an afternoon rest. All of the restaurants in the town I’m in are so close to the water they’re almost in it.

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There’s a kind of aloneness that is indulgent and voluptuous, that is like swimming in the calm water I’m surrounded by. I have it here. 

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I’m spending a lot of time with the slow and sensuous pleasures of the world. I sat under these pines for I don’t know how long, just breathing their smell until I understood the existence of mastiha. I’m spending hours on my patio, staring at the way the blue of my neighbor’s shutters matches perfectly the blue of the Aegean, and doing the kind of writing, personal and professional, that is only possible for me when I have the space and time to spread out mentally like this.

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One of the town’s mini marts had fresh figs today,

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and the colors matched some of the flowers I see on the walk there.

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I’m ruined for regular life.